e.g. from the Mac man pages:
man ln
-h If the NewLinkFile (or directory) is a symbolic link, do not follow
it. This is most useful with the -f option, to replace a symlink
which can point to a directory.
I am writing a script which once a day iterates over hundreds of files and symlinks them all and then periodically through out the day checks for new files and symlinks them. Would be great to use this -h check or something similar as at the moment it is done very awkwardly.
A GNU equivalent of the BSD ln -sh is ln -sn.
But GNU's ln -sT is safer, because it will skip both symbolic links and directories.
Compare:
cd "$(mktemp -d)"
mkdir bin
for d in bin usr etc; do ln -sn "/$d" "$d"; done
# will create a bin/bin -> /bin symlink
vs.
cd "$(mktemp -d)"
mkdir bin
for d in bin usr etc; do ln -sT "/$d" "$d"; done
ln: failed to create symbolic link 'bin': File exists
i want to write a shell command to sync current directory to backup directory with some requirments. the command i'm using is:
rsync -ptvHS --progress --delete-after --exclude /backup $pwd ~/backup
i want the directory timestamps to be ignored, eventhough i use -t to preserve the file timestamps.
Any idea?
thank you in advance
From the man page:
-t, --times preserve modification times
-O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times
-J, --omit-link-times omit symlinks from --times
Seems like you need to add -O to your command.
This is from rsync 3.1.2; you might find your version is too old.
In UNIX, I read that moving a shell script to /usr/local/bin will allow you to execute the script from any location by simply typing "[scriptname].sh" and pressing enter.
I have moved a script with both normal user and root permissions but I can't run it.
The script:
#! bin/bash
echo "The current date and time is:"
date
echo "The total system uptime is"
uptime
echo "The users currently logged in are:"
who
echo "The current user is:"
who -m
exit 0
This is what happens when I try to move and then run the script:
[myusername#VDDK13C-6DDE885 ~]$ sudo mv sysinfo.sh /usr/local/bin
[myusername#VDDK13C-6DDE885 ~]$ sysinfo.sh
bash: sysinfo.sh: command not found
If you want to run the script from everywhere you need to add it to your PATH. Usually /usr/local/bin is in the path of every user so this way it should work.
So check if in your system /usr/local/bin is in your PATH doing, on your terminal:
echo $PATH
You should see a lot of paths listed (like /bin, /sbin etc...). If its not listed you can add it. A even better solution is to keep all your scripts inside a directory, for example in your home and add it to your path.
To add a directory in your path you can modify your shell init scripts and add the new directories, for example if you're usin the BASH shell you can edi your .bashrc and add the line:
PATH=$PATH:/the_directory_you_want_to_add/:/another_directory/
This will append the new directories to your existing PATH.
You have to move it somewhere in your path. Try this:
echo $PATH
I bet /usr/local/bin is not listed.
I handle this by making a bin directory in my $HOME (i.e. mkdir ~/bin) and adding this to my ~/.bashrc file (make the file if you don't already have one):
export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
This may seem silly to mention, but did you make sure it is executable? Did you chmod +x script.sh? Does the shell script have the correct path to it's shell at the top (i.e #!/bin/bash)? Also, are you using UNIX or LINUX or FreeBSD? (last question is important)
To run executable from any directory:
1)Make a bin directory under your home directory and mv your executable scripts into it.
[root#ip9-114-192-179 ~]# cd /home
[root#ip9-114-192-179 home]# mkdir bin
[root#ip9-114-192-179 home]#ls
bin cloud-init-0.7.4-10.el7.noarch.rpm cloud-user epel-release-7-11.noarch.rpm
2)Move your executable scripts in bin direcoty.
mv preeti.sh /home/bin
3)Now add it to your path variable.And source it.
[root#ip9-114-192-179 ~]# echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/home/bin"' >> /etc/profile
[root#ip9-114-192-179 ~]# source /etc/profile
[root#ip9-114-192-179 ~]# echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin:/home/bin
4)Check if that path is added in path variable.
[root#ip9-114-192-179 ~]# echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin:/home/bin
5)Verify if script is running from any random directory.
I would like to rsync from local computer to server. On a directory that does not exist, and I want rsync to create that directory on the server first.
How can I do that?
If you have more than the last leaf directory to be created, you can either run a separate ssh ... mkdir -p first, or use the --rsync-path trick as explained here :
rsync -a --rsync-path="mkdir -p /tmp/x/y/z/ && rsync" $source user#remote:/tmp/x/y/z/
Or use the --relative option as suggested by Tony. In that case, you only specify the root of the destination, which must exist, and not the directory structure of the source, which will be created:
rsync -a --relative /new/x/y/z/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
This way, you will end up with /pre_existing/dir/new/x/y/z/
And if you want to have "y/z/" created, but not inside "new/x/", you can add ./ where you want --relativeto begin:
rsync -a --relative /new/x/./y/z/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
would create /pre_existing/dir/y/z/.
From the rsync manual page (man rsync):
--mkpath create the destination's path component
--mkpath was added in rsync 3.2.3 (6 Aug 2020).
Assuming you are using ssh to connect rsync, what about to send a ssh command before:
ssh user#server mkdir -p existingdir/newdir
if it already exists, nothing happens
The -R, --relative option will do this.
For example: if you want to backup /var/named/chroot and create the same directory structure on the remote server then -R will do just that.
this worked for me:
rsync /dev/null node:existing-dir/new-dir/
I do get this message :
skipping non-regular file "null"
but I don't have to worry about having an empty directory hanging around.
I don't think you can do it with one rsync command, but you can 'pre-create' the extra directory first like this:
rsync --recursive emptydir/ destination/newdir
where 'emptydir' is a local empty directory (which you might have to create as a temporary directory first).
It's a bit of a hack, but it works for me.
cheers
Chris
This answer uses bits of other answers, but hopefully it'll be a bit clearer as to the circumstances. You never specified what you were rsyncing - a single directory entry or multiple files.
So let's assume you are moving a source directory entry across, and not just moving the files contained in it.
Let's say you have a directory locally called data/myappdata/ and you have a load of subdirectories underneath this.
You have data/ on your target machine but no data/myappdata/ - this is easy enough:
rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/ user#host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata
You can even use a different name for the remote directory:
rsync -rvv --recursive /path/to/data/myappdata user#host:/remote/path/to/data/newdirname
If you're just moving some files and not moving the directory entry that contains them then you would do:
rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/*.txt user#host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata/
and it will create the myappdata directory for you on the remote machine to place your files in. Again, the data/ directory must exist on the remote machine.
Incidentally, my use of -rvv flag is to get doubly verbose output so it is clear about what it does, as well as the necessary recursive behaviour.
Just to show you what I get when using rsync (3.0.9 on Ubuntu 12.04)
$ rsync -rvv *.txt user#remote.machine:/tmp/newdir/
opening connection using: ssh -l user remote.machine rsync --server -vvre.iLsf . /tmp/newdir/
user#remote.machine's password:
sending incremental file list
created directory /tmp/newdir
delta-transmission enabled
bar.txt
foo.txt
total: matches=0 hash_hits=0 false_alarms=0 data=0
Hope this clears this up a little bit.
eg:
from: /xxx/a/b/c/d/e/1.html
to: user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/b/c/d/e/1.html
rsync:
cd /xxx/a/ && rsync -auvR b/c/d/e/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
rsync source.pdf user1#192.168.56.100:~/not-created/target.pdf
If the target file is fully specified, the directory ~/not-created is not created.
rsync source.pdf user1#192.168.56.100:~/will-be-created/
But the target is specified with only a directory, the directory ~/will-be-created is created. / must be followed to let rsync know will-be-created is a directory.
use rsync twice~
1: tranfer a temp file, make sure remote relative directories has been created.
tempfile=/Users/temp/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/temp.txt
# Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/ is directory that wanted.
rsync -aq /Users/temp/ rsync://remote
2: then you can specify the remote directory for transfer files/directory
tempfile|dir=/Users/XX/data|/Users/XX/data/
rsync -avc /Users/XX/data rsync://remote/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2
# Tips: [SRC] with/without '/' is different
This creates the dir tree /usr/local/bin in the destination and then syncs all containing files and folders recursively:
rsync --archive --include="/usr" --include="/usr/local" --include="/usr/local/bin" --include="/usr/local/bin/**" --exclude="*" user#remote:/ /home/user
Compared to mkdir -p, the dir tree even has the same perms as the source.
If you are using a version or rsync that doesn't have 'mkpath', then --files-from can help. Suppose you need to create 'mysubdir' in the target directory
Create 'filelist.txt' to contain
mysubdir/dummy
mkdir -p source_dir/mysubdir/
touch source_dir/mysubdir/dummy
rsync --files-from='filelist.txt' source_dir target_dir
rsync will copy mysubdir/dummy to target_dir, creating mysubdir in the process. Tested with rsync 3.1.3 on Raspberry Pi OS (debian).
I have a list of dotFiles at my workarea. For example, .bashrc and .vimrc.
I want to make a symlinks from them to my Home such that their names are the same as in my workarea -folder.
My attempt in pseudo-code
ln workarea/.[a-zA-Z] ~/.*
The problem is to have a bijection from [a-zA-Z] to the files which occur in my Home.
How can you make symlinks with the target files of same name as the original files?
'man ln' says:
ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY (3rd form)
So you need to do something like:
$ ln -s workarea/.* ~/
The possible uses of ln to create symbolic link(s) are:
ln -s <source-file> [<target-file]>
ln -s <source-file> ... <target-dir>
When you type
ln -s workarea/.[a-zA-Z]* ~/.*
(I think you were missing a *) the shell will expand out workarea/.[a-zA-Z] and ~/.*, so (presuming that the your HOME directory contains the files .abc and .def) you would end up with
ln -s workarea/.bash_profile workarea/.bashrc ~/.abc ~/.def
which fits neither usage of ln.
To use the second usage of ln, you would use:
ln -s workarea/.[a-zA-Z]* ~/.